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7/28/2019 Ambiguity of Phenomenological Method (Burch)
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Ambiguity of Phenomenological Method?
‘V AReplytoJohnOsborne
Robert Burch
University ofAlberta
What follows may prove to be a discussion at cross-purposes and so in the
end more of a monologue than a genuine contribution to communal
self-understanding. Osborne invites us to share in a “dialogue” on “the
relation between research practice and phenomenological metatheory”
(in press, p. 2),’ and having been concerned with aspects of this issue
myself(cf. Burch, 1989, 1990, in press), Tam happy to join in. Yet I cometo the topic from the other direction to Osborne, that is, not as a prac
tioner in a specific domain of human science research confronted with
therapeutic exigencies, fending off positivist critics, and looking to phe
nomenolo for “metatheoretical” support and methodological guidance,
but as one confirmed in the broad tradition of philosophical discourse
with its own inherited concerns, rules of propriety, and pretensions to
totality, who approaches human science research specifically as a topic of
philosophy. Whether
this difference in orientation precludes a genuine
common ground remains to be seen. One can only ever properly speak
from the place where one is at, and leave others to do likewise, which at
any rate is a precondition of genuine dialogue. “I speak according to my
best lights principally before myself,” Husserl writes, “but in that man
ner also before others” (1970, p. 18).
Instead of addressing Osborne’s concerns directly in the form that he
poses them, my intention is to discuss some broad issues regarding the
place of phenomenoloy in relation to empirical science and philosophyand to explore at a general level some essential dimensions of the phe
nomenological understanding of essence. In the process, I speak to
Osborne’s concerns after a fashion, but my chief purpose is to provide a
different slant than he upon what is truly at stake, situating his concerns
in a broader context and so giving them a different meaning. Though at
one level this may serve to dispel some ambiguity, at another it may
reveal that ambiguity is endemic to the topic.
The Place of the Question
As he formulates it, Osborne’s overarching concern is “the relation be
tween research practice and phenomenological metatheory” (p. 2). Now,
no one committed to phenomenological research is apt to doubt the
importance of this concern in spirit. Phenomenologists do need to put
their “metatheoretical house in as much order as possible” (p. 2) and to
be ever vigilant regarding the concrete connection between theoretical
Phenomeno1o’ + Pedago’ Volume 9 1991
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50th Anniversary of the Faculty of Education
essentially insofar as it is one with our self-constitution. Admittedly, in
some spheres and levels, the constitution of the world is an ideal con
struct of an explicit science and serves to delimit a specific range of
possible objects of explanation. For example, the world of Euclidean
geometry is constructed from definite postulates and definitions that
delimit a world in which, for instance, triangle is then a precisely deter
mined ideal object. Yet the meaning and ground of that construction lies
ultimately in the spatial constitution of the world of everyday lived
experience. (When, for example, Husserl [19701 speaks of a “crisis” of
European sciences, he has in mind, partly, the failure to show how the
sciences are ultimately founded in the constitution of the life world. It is
for this reason that, in spite of the technical empowerment they afford,
these sciences are said to have lost their meaning for life.) A “world” in
this phenomenological sense is that on the basis of which objects arealways already understood as such and accessible in the first place,
however they may then get explained in detail. But this is just how
phenomenology understands the being of beings (cf. Burch, in press).
This implies that for phenomenology the forms of transcendence thatconstitute the being of beings are ultimately one with the transcendence
that is our own self-constitution, our being-in-the-world. It is this essential interconnection that makes possible our a priori knowledge and lies
at the basis of all phenomenological reflection. In affirming this intercon
nection, however, phenomenology “does not say that being is a product of
human being” (Heidegger, 197Th, p. 216), for there is always more to our
being-in-the-world as a being among beings than any human willing,
whether singly or collectively, can simply posit, delimit, or create. Still,
we always say too little of “being itself”’ when in saying “being” we leave out
its presence in [An-wesen zum] the human essence and thereby misjudgethat this essence itself co-constitutes [mitausmacht] being. We also say toolittle of human being if, in saying “being” (not human being), we set human
being apart and only then bring that which has been set apart into relationship with being. (Heidegger, 1958, p. 75)
In this respect, the ambiguity of phenomenological method is from the
first an ontological issue.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
Among the once popular light-bulb jokes, there was one that ran: “How
many philosophers does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer: “That
depends upon what you mean by ‘light bulb.” My “reply” to Osborne hastaken roughly the same form. To the question, “How are we to under
stand the practice of phenomenology as the study of essences?” my
response has been, “That depends upon what you mean by ‘essence.”
The need to address this latter concern is what occasioned my excursion
into the history of philosophy. At issue was the essence of phenomenology
and ultimately the essence of essence.
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University ofAlberta
thence to the situating contexts of all forms of the subject/object
dichotomy and its ancillary functions. Yet it must also complete the circle
of this investigation, returning to the subject/object dichotomy, and
thereby to the merely correct and seemingly given, though now
reinterpreted more originally.
Still, there are at least three related respects in which this “method” does
seem to pose difficulties. First, phenomeno1or is theory only insofar as it
pursues truth with a universal intent. In this formal respect, it would
seem to meet opposing theories on a common ground. Indeed, in the
empiricist accusation that phenomenolor universalizes illicitly, and in
our private worries that this might well be so, this ground is evident. But
the genuine difficulty here is not that phenomenolor might indeed
universalize illicitly, but that phenomenologists will take this merely
formal determination of a common ground to be decisive and in that way
misunderstand their own project. For the decisiveness of this common
ground is based upon a set of assumptions that phenomenolo should
properly reject. It assumes, for example, that theorizing both begins and
originates with what is simply particular and thence by means of a
universalizing abstraction from selected “data” ventures to establish
something more general. Ideally, the place of the theorist in this process
is “u-topian,” that is, it is nowhere in particular, since one seeks to
maintain an objective, disinterested perspective on all particulars. Theuniversality that is thereby posited is an abstract universal, that is, an
empty form derived from experience, that in being so derived is posited as
a determinate object for our knowledge, and that holds indifferently of all
the particulars within its extension. The methodological demand that
this imposes—one which phenomeno1o is thought unable to meet—is to
establish the scope of this extension, in other words, to determine the
generality of the form, plotting the “correct” range of its experiential
“application” bothwithin
andacross differences, for example, of gender,
class, background, culture, and so on. Now, it is quite true that phenom
enolor does not meet this demand. Yet it fails to do so not from some
inherent deficiency, but because it rejects the very terms in which the
demand is posed. On its own terms, the beginning and origin of phenom
enological theorizing is the concrete situation in which the theorist finds
herself, a situation always already universal in its essential constitution,
the task being to explore the truth of that situation from within. The
proper place of the phenomenological theorist, then, is just that situation
itself, since there is no other, and nothing, as it were, that can be for us
outside it. To borrow here a Platonic image in order to reject it, the
situation is not properly rendered as a particular cavernous domain
juxtaposed to all other possible such domains that one can imagine or
encounter, a merely parochial outlook that in theory we must escape
absolutely, along with all other such outlooks, to reach a radically univer
sal and hence transcendent truth. Rather, the situation is the very place
wherein essential, universal truth is realized (in both senses of “realize”)
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sofar as the tradition advances the principle that what is distinct must
essentially be separable. What phenomenology holds in contrast is that
this principle is itself an inappropriate residue of objectivizing thought
and not an essential reflection of the matter itself. Once beyond the
subject/object dichotomy, it also proves difficult to make clear how in
principle the movement back to that level, that is, from truth as meaningto truth as correctness, is to be accomplished and what one is then to
make of the “correct” in the light of the previous course of thought.
Though it may seem to critics like a dodge, phenomenology insists that
there can be no such clarification in principle, since what one truly
makes of essential thinking and the transformations its effects can only
be discovered in medias res.
Third, as I have characterized it, phenomenological theorizing has an
inherent ambiguity. On the one hand, it seeks to know the ultimate
situating context of our lived experience, but in itself is a transformation
of that context. Between the phenomenological truth we seek to know
and the phenomenological knowing itself there is an essential correla
tion, our self-constitution being part of the constitution of that domain of
truth. On the other hand (cf. Fackenheim, 1961, p. 90), the context that
situates us humanly, precisely in doing so, in truth always inevitably
eludes absolute comprehension, or rather is comprehended objectively,
certainly, only on the basis of a pseudo-detachment from our concretelived experience. At the highest level, then, phenomenological knowledge
is a “learned ignorance” of sorts—”ignorance,” because it knows the
totality it seeks to comprehend always essentially eludes its certain,
objective grasp; yet “learned,” because it recognizes that totality as such
and knows the ground of its ignorance. “In this realm, one cannot prove
anything, but one can show a great deal” (Heidegger, 1957, p. 10).
No doubt to empiricist thought these limits to phenomenological under
standing will always appear to be simply limitations, that is, merelynegative restrictions to a blanket-imposed standard of objectivity, con
ceptual precision, and abstract universality. To phenomenology, in con
trast, they mark the very boundaries within which essential thinking is
possible and wherein it comes into its own. From a phenomenological
perspective, then, the deeper issue is not whether we can meet externally
imposed standards of exactness, which in any case we consider inessen
tial and inappropriate, but how the essential boundaries of our thinking
and being can be plumbed and comprehended by beings who are in theirvery selfliood finite and situated. In this regard, it is the debate with the
metaphysical tradition that is more profound and exigent. At issue is
whether, as metaphysics claims, the true origin of essential knowledge
lies in the infinitude of the divine perspective, an infinitude that must be
definitively realized by us, if our claims to universality and transcendence
are not to dissipate into mere finitude; or whether, as phenomenology
claims, it lies in a finite transcendence that discloses “being” different
essentially from all beings and so beyond our absolute comprehension,
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50th Anniversary of the Faculty of Education
but which at the same time is the indeterminate positive domain whereinalone beings are manifest and human comprehension is truly possible. Inthis debate, phenomenologists might take heart from Kant’s affirmation
in the wake of his own critique of traditional metaphysics. “Although wehad contemplated building a tower which should reach to the heavens,
the supply ofmaterials suffices only for a dwelling-house, just sufficientlycommodious for our business on the level of experience, and just sufficiently high to allow of our overlooking it” (p. 573).
Note
1. This article is a reply to Osborne (in press) published in this volume of
Phenomenology + Pedagogy. All references to Osborne are to this article, and thepage numbers shown correspond to the draft copy of the article.
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